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Former Olympian with Minn. ties plans marathon as final pro race

Nick Symmonds announced his retirement from professional track and field earlier this year and plans to run the Honolulu Marathon in December as his final race. Courtesy photo / Nick Symmonds

At the start of 2017, Nick Symmonds announced this would be his last year of competitive running. But that doesn’t mean the hard-charging middle distance runner is any less motivated.

Symmonds, a six-time U.S. 800 meter champion and two-time Olympian, is lacing up for one final race as a professional runner before turning his attention to professional mountain climbing and growing Run Gum, a company he started in a quest to find a better product to boost performance.

In December, he’ll run the Honolulu Marathon, and earlier this month we caught up on the phone to talk about his journey and training, living in and visiting Minnesota (his father and grandfather both worked for Mayo Clinic in Rochester), future plans and his outspoken nature in taking on track and field’s governing bodies.

Steve Wagner is the director for Forum News Service, the premier regional news wire provider in the Upper Midwest. The Forum News Service offers content from award-winning newspapers within Forum Communications and distributes news, photos and video to subscribers in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Montana. Previously, Wagner served as editor at the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald and Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer, and worked in numerous reporter and editor roles at The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.